The Sixth Flip
by Aenigmatic
Summary: Vignette: Erik and Tarot Cards. Which wins? Death or Love? Adapted both from Kay and Lloyd Webber. A 'stream-of-consciousness' soundalike fic, EC somewhat. Pls read!


**The Sixth Flip **

**Author's Note:**

_Another Vignette that tries to capture the ramblings of Erik. Sigh.   
I can't get enough of that Phantom. What spurred this on this time? After reading Susan Kay's Phantom for the 306th time, and this time a non-stop listening bout to hot tenors like Mario Frangoulis and Alessandro Safina._

_In Kay's Phantom, a passage that I normally read with indifference started to intrigue me - a short paragraph about Erik's puzzlement when he toyed with the divination cards that always yielded Death or, The Lovers - an episode before he met Christine. Here's my take on it and honestly, I don't want so much angst, so the endingwell, dream or reality, you'll have to read to the end to see if you like it! ;-)_

_As for writing a full length storyam still thinking of the idea (well, an inkling at least, but nothing is water tight!) and how to go about it.   
Hee: An appeal for help -If anyone is willing to help me out with it (either with ideas or perhaps even collaboration?), please do! _

_So, yes, that aside, here we go. _

_Do drop me a note anytime: vesania@gmx.net _

**********  
_From the Point of View of Erik -_

Death, or the Lovers, the uncanny alternating results that emerged on my 6th flip. But then, I was all too aware that the number 6 was too incomplete, the number of man and the devil. That man shared a greater bond with evil than we cared to admit. 

The flip of the Tarots could not have yielded a more bewildering choice - death would have been certainly more appealing, that triumphant, climactic end to my sorry existence, the merciful release I craved. The rotten majesty of Death, the bald, rigid skullhow could I be afraidI lived as death, there was no fear when I spoke of _Him_ candidly; I merely became one with the one who owned me. 

That lost whine of a dog pulled me from my master's handit made me a master again, away from that Supreme Being

_Sachashe was nearly blind, motherlet me stay with her, please! _

She licked my face as if in mourning, and I opened my tightly clasped hands, truly surprised to see my own tears that stained the white, cold palmsand she licked them off too, and then my mask fell

_No_, I screamed, _my maskthat horrifying face, keep it away from me! _

_The mask is magic, Erikit protects youas long as you wear it, you will never see that face again_

I believe, I believeas I took hopeful steps into acceptance

Oh horror! 

No, that accursed mask ripped, my fabric saviour that was torn awayin the small, pitiless hands of Luciana, and all I saw through anguished eyes was the cloud of dust that stubbornly lingered in the air after her fall, long after her body turned cold in her father's arms. 

_Erikyour mother died three days ago_

We look the same in death, do we not? All is fair in death and warover which the world cut itself in half! 

That I knew what courage it demanded of her to kiss me dawned on me ironically as I beheld her on her deathbed. She did not want the breath of death itself when I was a child, just as I had no desire to kiss her when her breath was stolen from her. Maybe she had spent the rest of her lifetime mourning already

I could not feel slam of my hand against supporting pillars of my lair, that slam to shock me into reality -and in that fright I thought perhaps I had drowned in my regressive dreams and could not wake up

_Mamaplease don'tplease! Can I have two, mama? It is my birthday_

There is no pity but hate; it drove a swift, straight dagger into my chest. The dullest knife that stripped shrouds in crypts and that unknown finger slyly extinguished that small flame of childish yearning that had for so long flickered pathetically. I saw her mouth open - perhaps to deliver of her scalding words -

_Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee_

The chant did not drone on and I heard no sound and in that brilliant transformation, her open mouth yielded the most _unsullied_ soprano voice that singed my ears painfully. The searing familiarity of that face, young and without wrinkle, blue eyes that were still shallow yet held the potential of cupping the most fragile of emotions in their depths. 

_Oh, how strange!   
Like a spell does the evening bind me!  
And a deep languid charm, I feel without alarm  
With its melody enwind me  
And all my heart subdue_

Oh, too painful - too reminiscent - too mechanical! Words sung without the intricate nuances worthy of them, and the lack of inflexions that made a mockery of musiccleaving what would have otherwise been a passable performance. Short laughter escaped meI felt like an insistent, narrow-minded jeweller rummaging through mire content only when the purest diamond lay in my hands. 

I shook my head and my vision cleared for a whileThat card fell before my eyes after it twirled a strange dance in mid-air as I watched with bated breath - the sixth time that day. 

Two garishly happy faces absorbed in each other emerged from the alluring pull of the Tarot, that singular card that illustrated The Lovers under a lowering, thunderous sky, ephemeral dreams made under the exhilarating power of night. Could that embrace I now scorned still contain secrets that I yearn to know - scarcely breathing - of_love_? 

_Love_found in the corner where death vacated. _Passion_the inexorable pull that brought me down the lane of the land of the dead. And now that I saw the three of them standing together_Death_, oddly weak and crippled, no longer nightmarish when he stood next to passion and her loud plumage. 

_You deceived me, I gave my mind blindly_

It only was the treachery of time that converged earth and heaven, or heaven and hell. Savour each sensation. 

Christine, my drug, my vice, that greater sin that I thought morphine had successfully delivered me from. 

_Dies Irae_, _to be sung as written on the staves, our bodies defenceless and silent, entwined, forced onto the soft covers of the bed in wrath's aftermath. _

My lips were pressed to her bare shoulder and her arm was curled around me, in a grip so tight that I feared for her discomfort. 

"_Erik, mon ange?_" Christine turns to me, eyes glassy with sleep onto my graceless form, and she shifts slightly, her head hidden under the massive weight of her curls, her arms secure around my neck. 

"It is still early, my love," I heard myself murmur, and felt rather than saw, her lips descending upon mine. 

Her delighted shiver at the electric contact was infinitely pleasing. 

Timeless. 

She freed me from my labyrinthine shackles, from the devastating cold of nothingness and ground my feet in the crimson, passionate hue of reality. Was love ever so evocative? 

That rainbow I painted for Rezashe paints it now, over and over into the tactile embrace that convinced me incredulously this woman was mine. Her kiss was murderous, as dark as the power that I was drunk on those years ago when my lasso had callously claimed yet another victim, and nowher kissmy beloved Christine, drew the dying breath from me, and that love, that sweetest intoxication which demanded nothing less than a resurrection. 

"Erik," she whispered. 

There was no beauty without pain, no love without death, no ecstasy without anguish. How easy it became for the pain of the years to dull and under her loving gaze, I banished it to another lifetime. 

Death, Lifeor maybe even The Loverssatiation.   


{Fini}

**********  
_Do not go gentle into that good night,   
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;  
Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

_Though wise men at their end know dark is right,  
Because their words had forked no lightning they  
Do not go gentle into that good night._

_Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright  
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,  
Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

_Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,  
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,   
Do not go gentle into that good night.  
  
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight  
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,   
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  
  
And you, my father, there on the sad height,  
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.  
Do not go gentle into that good night.  
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  
_  
--Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night  



End file.
